Today in nearly every store, transparent merchandise containers are used for packaging and merchandising almost any item imaginable, such as audio and video cassettes, electronic devices and components, watches, and other high value items.
Thermoformed containers of this type have the advantage of being produced in a wide variety of shapes and sizes to form a different sized container for each type of product to be packaged.
Such transparent plastic merchandise containers are typically produced using relatively thin molded plastic that is thick enough to contain and protect the item from the environment, but not so thick that it cannot be readily cut open by the consumer once purchase. One obvious advantage is that transparent plastic merchandise containers allow the consumer to view the contents without having to open the container. Other advantages of such transparent merchandise containers include the fact that they are lightweight, sturdy, easily arranged, and provide a high quality attractive appearance. It is naturally desirable to be able to produce these packages using an economic amount of plastic as the packages with be disposed of after being opened by the consumer.
In merchandising one or more of such transparent merchandise containers in stores, such transparent merchandise containers are typically suspended from merchandise racks. To facilitate such suspension, the containers are usually provided with an upstanding side wall extension or hanging flange having an opening therein to allow the container to hang from a merchandising hook.
With transparent plastic merchandise containers, it is also important to the packager that they discourage theft. Typically, these packages are hung in a series on long merchandise display hooks. The packages normally are provided with an aperture through which the display hook extends. For high value items, the long merchandise display hooks are in turn provided with locking mechanisms at the front end of the hook to prevent the items from being removed without the assistance of the store keeper.
However, the typical thickness of the transparent merchandise packaging allows them to be sliced at a position near the hang aperture, allowing the entire package to be removed from a locked merchandise hook.
One of the approaches used to discourage theft of hung items is to provide a separate transparent container of a thick plastic which also has a thick hanger portion. These containers are used for displaying the merchandise, but are reused by the store keeper by removing them from around the packaged product once purchased. Such a container is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,509,528, which is hereby incorporated herein by reference. However, this approach involves the need to provide a complete set of these outer packages which must be in an array of sizes it they are to protect a wide variety of merchandise. This requires a substantial investment and the provision of additional storage for these temporary containers.
Accordingly, in light of the aforementioned shortcomings of currently available merchandise containers, there has been a long-felt need to provide an improved transparent plastic merchandise container system that is capable of convenient and effective use to prevent theft while being relatively less expensive than known systems, and which may be applied with a relatively small investment in additional equipment.